The Closet [COMPLETE]

Father

William was in the army and had been posted in Afghanistan when his convoy was ambushed by Afghani terrorists and blown away five years ago. He was taken to be dead, as the blast had occurred in an area firmly under the control of the terrorists and any possible attempt at rescuing the dead men's remains was unfeasible. It turned out, however, that all this time he had been living in captivity among the native terrorists and had been rescued during one of the Army raids to the terrorist dens.

Blue did not remember him properly. What she could scrounge from the well of her memories were vague glimpses: she remembered her father lobbing her in the air only to catch her back while she laughed in ecstasy; she remembered also a visit to a golden beach where the two of them had tried to make sandcastles. But she couldn't be sure if these images were real or pieces of a lonely child's imagination. A day before his arrival, Blue had taken out an old family album and pored over her father's photographs trying to renew acquaintance with him. In the morning next day, Maureen had driven her to the airport where they stood in the midst of a thin crowd behind steel bars looking expectantly at people trickling out of the glass door of the airport. Blue had carried William's picture in her pocket which she took out repeatedly to compare against the people stepping out of the airport, trying vaguely to identify her father. She tried hard to keep the image in her head but it had just refused to stick and be a part. When her father had actually walked out, she could hardly recognize him. He wasn't the man in the old photograph that she had with her. He was bald, frail and his face was red, burnt in the sun. He carried a walking stick and limped. Blue had felt then that all this time she had been waiting for a stranger. The stranger walked towards them with a smile that looked forced. Frankly, he seemed disappointed at seeing them. She thought that he had looked around them as if to see if someone else had come too. But Maureen had hidden her apprehension rather well. She had hugged him tightly and given him a kiss before parting. Now it was Blue's turn to get acquainted with her father. She had expected that he would pick her up and then lob her in the air, just like she remembered, but instead, he had bent down with difficulty and given Blue a peck on the cheek. The dampness of his lips upon her cheek had lingered for a while partly melting some of the coldness that she had felt towards him. He had asked her then how she had been all these years and Blue, after taking her time, had answered 'fine'.

That was right. She had been just fine all these years and hadn't really felt the need of a father, she was used to a life without one. It had been a strange ride back home. Her mother, in the driver's seat, had tried her best to get a conversation going but all talk ended abruptly when no one could find things to say and an awkward silence engulfed the car. At one point, she had asked Blue to recite a poem that had won her a prize in a recitation competition at her school. Blue had floundered at many places and could tell that her father, even though he clapped softly at the end, had been disappointed by her effort.

But Blue's initial incredulity had given way to warmer feelings. With time she had come to associate William as a part of her family, carved a small niche in her life to place him in. When he told her about his time in Afghanistan, how he had been used as a slave to do menial chores and how he had been able to escape, she was greatly impressed. At school, she had repeated the stories to her friends who were awed by her father. Gradually, she had come to terms with the change in her life and made peace with it.